The Secrets ANBU Keep
by lh.cameron
Summary: Gathering secrets is par for the course when one joins ANBU. But there's a line between which secrets get passed along and which are kept hidden under porcelain masks and bone-white armour. The secrets they keep are not dangerous, but personal. But sometimes there's not a difference and that's what makes this job hard sometimes.
1. Take Comfort in Reality

And it was evident in the way she loved that when she did love, she loved deeply. Whether it be her little brother, for whom she openly admitted she would give an arm and a leg if it was demanded of her, or her small, fractured family who she laughed and argued with and no matter how many times she left that she ultimately came back to, even if she wasn't whole and happy to be pieced back together. It could even be witnessed in the big, old dog that lived in her house with her and her brother - who she was seen walking around the village with and who she would pet gently when he rubbed up against her leg.

With shinobi who were taught not to scream, not to make noise, whose identities were hidden behind masks and silent language, she reminded them how to be human, opened her door to them every night - one, two squads at a time, sometimes just a person or five or six it didn't matter - and she'd fix them food, talk to them, and they'd talk to her in turn, in grumbles and grunts and that silent language that she sometimes answered back in. They got to meet her brother, play with the old dog, were welcomed into her small, private life, where the masks weren't important, where they could be themselves - broken, shattered, vulnerable, bitter - and she would be the one to patch them up again, one warm meal and soft smile at a time.

She became a grounding force for so many of Konoha's ANBU. One person touched the lives of so many without judgment. Because she was a civilian who had known horror and still retained the ability to smile like the world hadn't ripped her to shreds at one point. She had the heart of a shinobi buried under a civilian's gentle hands.

Perhaps that's why they trusted her - for as much as people like them could trust anybody. Perhaps that's why they didn't tell their superiors about her. Perhaps that's why she was the best kept secret among operatives that had seen too much, done too much, and just couldn't handle it anymore.

Because with her there was no fine line between civilian and shinobi. There was only humanity, reality, and sometimes...sometimes that's all they needed. A reminder on how to be human.

The Third and Fourth Hokage died with the wish that they could have thanked the person who kept their ANBU from breaking. Perhaps she could have saved others too.

But that was a secret for the ANBU. She was theirs. The hospital couldn't have her, neither could the other divisions. Her quiet civilian home tucked out of the way and unassuming was a safe haven where everything was alright. Where things were okay even when everybody inside was broken and the world outside was so, so wrong and so very dark. They weren't about to let the rest of the world taint the safe haven they had created for themselves in her home.


	2. Lessons Learned

_There's a lot of things they teach you in ANBU._

How not to scream, how to kill, how to hide the body, and how to hunt the people that killed your teammate if it comes down to that (and it usually did) - the other person behind the porcelain mask next to you. It doesn't matter the animal.

(The animal rarely fit the person behind it at the end of the day when the masks came off.)

If you decide to die at your own hands they'll teach you how not to hide yourself away _too_ well so that your teammates (or someone, but most likely your teammates because there's probably no one else to come looking) can find you later. And they teach you how to make it _mostly_ clean and _somewhat_ painless - but death like that is never mostly clean nor somewhat painless and everybody knows it so there's never really a point.

The logic behind what they teach you is very simple, in the end.

Simple enough to become ingrained in your very being and simple enough that it's not a lesson that bears repeating after perhaps the second time they have to teach it to you, because _dang it, it didn't stick the first time._

 _The things they teach you in ANBU never leave you._

It's like the tattoo they put on your shoulder if you happen to make the cut.

The tattoo can be covered up, can be hidden from view and can be ignored as if it doesn't exist, but it never really leaves. It remains part of the person on whose skin it's inked in blood red - like the blood they spill on the battlefield and if it happens to get covered by blood...well, where the blood ends and the tattoo begins is sometimes hard to distinguish, and it all bears the same meaning in the end.

They don't teach you about what pain lies in the sunlight. It's easier, less painful in the shadows, but you should have already known that if you're joining ANBU. You should be leaving the sunlight on purpose, most think. And that's what most do.

They don't teach you how to torture somebody because, really, if you're mad enough - in your silent, cold, uniform, but still oddly personal fury - you'll know how.

They don't teach you how to cope, really. Coping is something that's more personal than anger, and if you're in ANBU, the choice to live that lifestyle is probably how you're coping with whatever pain you experienced while outside the shadow's grip.

 _There's no such thing as an ex-ANBU_.

Something deep down inside everyone who has ever been ANBU knows this. You may adopt other habits to adjust to life in the sunlight again but at home, you might as well have never taken the mask off. Unless you're a really good actor, you might be able to keep up the pretenses at home, too. The lessons they do and don't teach you sit off to the side in your brain because you can't just push them to the back - those lessons are too strong to be dismissed so carelessly out of hand.

The shadows are still more comfortable to you, and you try to melt into them whenever you have the chance because there's a part of you that recognizes the shadows as someplace so much safer, knows you'll be welcomed back with arms ready to bury you again in the faceless ranks of porcelain and bone white armor.

It's hard to fight temptation, and that's another thing they don't teach you in ANBU.

 _At some point, ANBU and the things it does and does not teach you, become all you have left. There are secrets in ANBU that you keep to yourself, for yourself._

It's just the nature of the job.


	3. Remembering Before

The younger ANBU see him around headquarters - he doesn't bother hiding that he's there (even if it ignores training that says he shouldn't _be_ there, shouldn't _let_ these people see his face without a mask, shouldn't even let them know he _exists_ but he pushes that training to the side) and he looms in the corners and in the shadows, watching, red right hand tucked away (out of sight, out of mind, because he doesn't want to _think_ about that) as he watches new people come and go and no one stays for very long. He's been here for so, so long even some of the oldest members can't remember how long he's been here.

He remembers his own Before in perfect clarity (some people don't and he counts them as the lucky ones but they are also, perhaps, the most unlucky). He remembers a towering city on the sea and sandstone ( _gone, gone, gone, just gone: ancient history_ ). Full of life and color and the people wandering the streets. Just the same, the whole thing could have been a dream (it's not a dream, it is - _was_ \- so very, very real and it hurts so, so much to think it's _not_ anymore.)

It comes in flashes to him, in dreams of a woman with lightning on her tongue and in her hands as it flashes under her skin even as she holds children with gentle hands (a living storm and he loved - _loves?_ \- her fiercely), in bursts when he sees bright blues and greens and any flash of white that enters his field of view and there's devastating beauty in what he sees - no one else _sees_ it, no one else _gets_ it.

And all of that is gone now, and it won't ever return and it aches and burns because he's the last one _left_ and there's nobody else who will _understand_ this Before and -

Eventually, the younger ANBU stop seeing him around headquarters.

Nobody questions it. After a few months, they hardly remember seeing him at all.

But there's still an ibis mask hanging from a hook in the Commander's Office and nobody's tried to claim that either. People eventually forget why, but they know it's something to be respected.

They would never know he was a refugee, an elite defender from a village long lost to war and history, only vaguely remembered by time.


	4. explore what's new

It's an older member that spots them first and behind the mask of a badger, his eyes narrow even as his lips quirk up.

The young recruits are new and wide-eyed for the most part about being let into ANBU headquarters - like they've suddenly found the supposedly hidden techniques of the Nidaime that are rumoured to be somewhere in the administration building. (The notes aren't in the building. He found them years ago in the floors of a shrine on the outer edges of the cliffs right before the drop off that extends into the murky depths of the Hanguri Gulf.)

They are not yet broken - he can see that much. Young as they are, all of them are impressionable, malleable. Breaking them, he suspects, will be predictable and slightly boring for all involved.

* * *

He's proven right, about those new recruits a few months later. When he sees them again as Cat, Rat, and Bird.

They are tired and weary, and their masks hold small cracks and chipped edges. Their hands are red and he knows that feeling. He also knows it will only make them stronger in the end if they're forced to endure on their own.

Cat recovers the quickest - he also suspects that Cat will be the first to die or drop out.

He's proven right about that too when the Cat mask is put back up for grabs.

Bird recovers next.

Bird only lasts a few months longer than Cat before they decide to make their way to Death.

It's Rat that lasts the longest, if only because Rat took the longest to recover, so Rat had time to learn, and Rat learned how to survive.

So while the ANBU Headquarters might not have been a new place for Rat, Rat was a new person.

And the man behind the badger mask decided he could probably get along with Rat.

After all, going to new places didn't necessarily have to be a physical journey.


End file.
